Gabriel and the High Blood Pressure
by quicksilversquared
Summary: In which Gabriel has high blood pressure, nothing seems to help, and Nathalie is definitely not paid enough for this.


Yearly doctor's appointments tended to be a mere annoyance to Gabriel Agreste. They were a waste of time, in his opinion, largely because he _always_ came away with a clean bill of health. He could have been spending that time doing almost _anything_ else- designing a new line, going over paperwork for the company, picking out fabrics that might work well for his next collection, finding a new person to akumatize...

But Nathalie and his insurance company both insisted, so he went. Besides, it probably _was_ a good idea. If he were to become seriously ill and not catch it early on, that could mean a _huge_ setback for him because he wouldn't be able to akumatize people so often because he would be forced to undergo observations and attend countless appointments. But he was always healthy, with all of his vital signs well within the normal ranges. He had never had any problems.

So Gabriel was a little taken aback when he spotted his doctor frowning down at his vitals printout. That had never happened before.

"Is your fashion business doing well?" the doctor asked, moving away and sitting down in front of his computer. He started to type something into the computer, occasionally glancing at Gabriel as he did.

"Yes, it's doing quite well," Gabriel responded, shifting in his seat. From this angle, he couldn't see what the doctor was typing and it was making him a bit nervous. He wasn't particularly used to the doctor actually taking _notes_ on him during his appointments. "The latest release went quite well, and we've expanded into having an American location as well."

Dr. Martin glanced over again. "Ah. And I suppose it was a lot of work for you, getting that all ready?"

"Not at all. My assistant took care of most of it for me. She's very organized, and she has helpers under her as well. We've done new locations before, so we know how to do it. It went quite smoothly." Gabriel folded his hands in his lap. He didn't quite understand why the doctor wanted to bother with small talk. None ever had before, though it was probably because Gabriel didn't ever _want_ to waste time like that. "I've managed to assemble quite a good team to take care of things like that so I can focus on the designing."

"I see." The doctor typed something in. "Any new sources of stress since I saw you last?"

Gabriel frowned. The last time he had seen the doctor was about a month after his wife went missing, so _that_ wasn't new. The only big change he could think of was that he had become Hawkmoth. _That_ was certainly a source of stress, with defeat after defeat by the hands of the superheroes.

But he could hardly tell the doctor about that. So he had to lie.

"No, no sources of stress."

Dr. Martin didn't look as though he really believed Gabriel. "Really. Well, I hate to tell you this, but you have _extremely_ high blood pressure, definitely in the hypertension range. Stress would be the most obvious explanation, but if you say that everything is going smoothly..."

"It is."

"Then I can only recommend some blood pressure medication to try to bring that level down," Dr. Martin said, typing something into his computer. "We want to take care of that before it causes any other health problems. I might also recommend a therapist- I see that your, ah, wife is still, ah, missing-" he quailed a little under Gabriel's glare but continued regardless. "If it would help to speak to someone-"

"It would not."

"Then just the blood pressure medication, then. And be sure to get plenty of sleep and water and a balanced diet, of course." He printed out a page, and signed it before handing it to Gabriel. "That's the information on your medication, if you want to look over it. I'll send the prescription to the pharmacy you have listed on your file- any changes to that? No? Great- and you should be able to pick it up later this afternoon. Instructions for how much and when you should take it are on the paper I just gave you as well as on the pill bottle. I'll want you to come in again in a few weeks to see how much of an effect it has. Any questions?"

Gabriel shook his head.

* * *

Nathalie had not been expecting Mr. Agreste to call her from the doctor's office with the request that she pick up medicine that he had been prescribed by the doctor. She was even more surprised to find that it was for lowering blood pressure, though once she really thought about it, it really shouldn't have been _that_ much of a shock. He was watching his akumas be beaten on an almost daily basis, failure after failure for a man who was used to getting his way. That would cause a whole lot of stress, which in turn could cause high blood pressure, and heart problems.

Hopefully the medicine would help, though from what Nathalie knew, it worked better when the source of the stress was also eliminated or at least reduced. That really wasn't looking likely, though- while Mr. Agreste denied it, the young superheroes _were_ getting better and they generally didn't have much trouble defeating the akumas Mr. Agreste- er, Hawkmoth- threw at them. Unless he made some _serious_ steps with creating better, more powerful akuma, he stood no chance of winning.

(She wasn't going to even _try_ telling him that, or even suggesting it. She knew better than that.)

"I'm not too concerned about it," Mr. Agreste told her that night as he swallowed the first pills. "I'll win soon enough, and then this will all clear up. It's just a little stress, no big deal."

But then he didn't win. Despite turning up the frequency of the akumas from a couple times a week to almost daily, Ladybug and Chat Noir took down every single one with something close to ease. Mr. Agreste was almost always frowning now, too wound up to even get much designing done.

Nathalie wasn't particularly surprised when the follow-up appointment showed that Mr. Agreste's blood pressure had inched up more. There were blood test this time, something that he had apparently hotly debated.

"Sir, we need to figure out what's going on _before_ you get any lasting damage to your heart," one of the nurses insisted. "If we can figure out the root of the problem, then we can try to treat that and see if it's any more successful than the blood pressure meds on their own."

"They're getting too nosy," Mr. Agreste grumbled that evening after he had returned home. "Next thing you know, they'll be sending someone home with me to see what I'm doing all day or something."

Nathalie said nothing. She personally was completely on board with the idea of the hospital making Mr. Agreste lay off with the akuma-making for a few days via meddling, mostly because she hated having to deal with rearranged photoshoots and designers late to work because they had been held up by an attack. Of course, being forced to stay away from his ridiculous lair for a few days would either have the effect of him choosing to attack at night, after the assigned nurse had left for the night (rue the thought, really; Nathalie was _not_ in the mood for being woken up in the middle of the night as an akuma plus the two superheroes tumbled by her window again), _or_ they would have someone watching him then, too, and he would just get even more frustrated and stressed by the intrusion.

Mr. Agreste might not be her favorite person ever, but Nathalie didn't particularly want to see him even _more_ stressed, partly because he would probably take it out on her (and somewhat on Adrien as well), and partly because she didn't want to have to deal with the mess that would follow should Mr. Agreste drop dead from a stress-induced heart attack.

So Nathalie decided to act. Of course, since she wasn't a particularly nurturing person, that involved a bit of research first before she started acting.

She trotted down to the chef to deliver a list of foods that Mr. Agreste should and shouldn't have in his meals, decreasing the salty snacks and increasing his fruits and vegetables. She bookmarked a page about exercise desks and contemplated the logistics of trying to get a treadmill into the butterfly lair so that Mr. Agreste could get some exercise while his akumas were out destroying the city. She propped a book about yoga and meditation on Mr. Agreste's desk where he would be sure to see it when he got back from his morning meetings, and then she turned on some doctor-approved calming music to float gently through his office.

Mr. Agreste returned at a quarter past noon, promptly shut off the music, and tossed the book in the trash after only a brief glance at it. Nathalie cringed, but he didn't comment further.

At three, a cup of hibiscus tea- proven to help lower blood pressure, according to Nathalie's Google searches- was delivered for Mr. Agreste. He gave it a scathing look as soon as it hit his desk.

"Nathalie, what is the meaning of this?"

"It's to help with your blood pressure, sir," Nathalie said carefully, glancing over at him. "So that the doctors don't try to come and evaluate you during the day."

Mr. Agreste grumbled something under his breath, downed the tea in one gulp, and headed off to his lair without another word. Thirteen minutes later, Nathalie's phone beeped with an akuma alert and she dropped her head with a sigh.

No one could say she hadn't tried.

* * *

A week after Gabriel's second doctor appointment, he arrived at the house to find his office smelling like a field of lavender. A pile of pamphlets sat on his desk, apparently Nathalie's latest results from her ongoing efforts to find something to reduce his blood pressure. He flipped through them- she was still trying to get him to do yoga, apparently, and waste his money on massages and a treadmill for his lair- and then tossed them all unceremoniously in the recycling bin under his desk before turning his attention to his sketching book. He had been lacking in design inspiration as of late, a fact that was endlessly frustrating to him. He had a new line that was supposed to be going out in another two months, and he could hardly depend entirely on his senior designers to carry the line.

His mind was blanking.

Before he and his wife had gotten so focused on the Miraculous, ideas had flowed out of him like a gushing spring. They had dropped off slightly when they spent nearly all of their time trying to research the whereabouts of the lost temple, and then after they had found it and his wife had gone missing, the stream of ideas had dried out even more. He had recovered a bit for a period following that, when he was using the book they had found as a source of inspiration, but now...

He couldn't think of anything. _Stupid, useless brain._

He downed the peppermint tea Nathalie put in front of him an hour into his fruitless sketching session. Two hours in, he was angrily munching on a banana that she had put in front of him. Hour three, it was green tea as he angrily gave up on the sketching (he had wasted ten perfectly good pages with his aimless scribbling, and on top of that one of his good pens was basically destroyed because he had been holding on to it too hard) and headed up to his lair, headache brewing from the ever-present smell of lavender that had filled the office.

(Come to think of it, he had forgotten to ask Nathalie about that. Once he got back, he would have to remember to ask her to have someone come in and air out the room.)

That afternoon's akuma was defeated in practically no time at all, and soon Gabriel was storming back into his office, a vein pulsing in his forehead. He had barely taken a step away from the painting of his wife when he stopped dead.

Now his office smelled _overpoweringly_ like roses. His eye twitched.

"NATHALIE!"

Nathalie promptly appeared in the doorway to his office. She looked somewhat harried. "Yes, Mr. Agreste?"

He gestured angrily to the room at large. "Why, may I ask, does this entire room smell like a teenager's cheap perfume?"

Nathalie gulped. "I...ah..."

He glared.

"I spilled some essential oil!" Nathalie finally blurted out. "It wasn't supposed to be this strong, really. I'm in the process of getting it all cleaned up."

"And _why_ did you have essential oils in the first place?" Gabriel asked dangerously. "I thought that you didn't do things like frivolous perfumes."

Nathalie let out another sigh at that. "...it was something that a website recommended. Lavender and rose are supposed to alleviate stress. It mentioned using a diffuser to dispense the smell so that it wouldn't get overpowering, but I _did_ want to try it sooner rather than later."

"I hate flowery scents," Gabriel informed her stiffly, trying not to breathe too much as he headed for the door. She moved quickly out of his way. "They give me a headache."

"Of course, sir."

"I want this room free of any _flowery_ scents by morning tomorrow."

"Of course, sir."

Grumbling, Gabriel stalked into the main atrium. The scent was much fainter out here, but it was still enough to make his headache twinge. He didn't particularly feel like attempting to do any work in the dining room, where the air would be fresher but still not clear, or in his lair, where there weren't any ridiculous _scents_ but there also wasn't any furniture. He stomped into his bedroom to take a couple pills for his headache, then left again to mill a little aimlessly in the atrium. He wasn't in any state to try to do any more designing for the day- he was too stressed out to make anything, and too unfocused from his headache to get any _other_ work done. He couldn't make another akuma right away, since Nooroo needed recharging, and even if he _could_ he wouldn't want to, since the stress from an incompetent akuma would just make his headache unbearably worse.

He had once had the theory that the additional anger and pain from a headache might combine with the negative vibes in the air to create an even more potent akuma, but he had quickly discovered that no, it just meant that he wasn't focused enough to create an akuma with decent powers and he had to suffer through a completely substandard akuma fight, all while battling a skull-splitting headache.

"Mr. Agreste? Do you have plans for this afternoon?"

Gabriel gritted his teeth and turned to Nathalie slowly. " _No_ , Nathalie, I do not, now that I don't have the use of my office."

Nathalie held out a few papers. "Then I have a few suggestions. It could help with your stress, and maybe bring your focus back..."

And that was how Gabriel Agreste found himself trying to contort himself into a crow pose forty-seven minutes later. He scowled as his arms shook under him when he tried to lift his feet off of the ground. Why Nathalie thought that this would be ' _relaxing'_ , he had no idea. He had had to change into an old pair of sweatpants to go to the class, _and_ take off his jacket and tie and shoes, and now his hair was falling out of place in the humidity of the yoga studio. He _had_ managed to score a spot in the very back corner of the room, at least, and the rest of the people in the room weren't paying any attention to him, like they didn't know who he was.

They probably didn't, if the _awful_ outfits that they were dressed in were any indication. It was so terribly unfashionable that it was making his eyes water. Maybe he should make a line of actually decent-looking workout clothes, made to flatter different body types no matter the pose.

Of course, he could hardly do anything about it if people insisted on doing yoga in ancient t-shirts and sweatpants worn thin to the point of being gross and see-through, but at least _he_ wouldn't look stupid if he decided to come torture himself- er, do yoga- again.

Which he wasn't actually going to do, because it was painful and _the human body was not meant to contort that way, did Nathalie actually want to kill him she was getting her next holiday bonus slashed for this._

"The doctor I talked to suggested it, sir," Nathalie said as soon as Gabriel got back to the mansion, ruffled and completely disgruntled. She had somehow managed to get rid of the majority of the rose smell in the hour and a half that he had been gone, but it seemed to have been at the price of her composure. Her bun had bits of hair that had fallen out and it looked like she had spilled water on herself at some point. "He said it was relaxing and could help you find focus."

"I think," Gabriel responded a bit tersely, "that perhaps there are different _kinds_ of yoga. That was not relaxing, it was actual _hell_. The only thing I was focusing on was _not dying_."

"I'm sorry about that, sir."

Gabriel just scowled.

* * *

Adrien was puzzled when he came home one day and found the entire house smelling like lemon. It wasn't overpowering, like the rose scent earlier in the week had been (he had never learned exactly what had happened there; he had _tried_ asking, but Nathalie had just sent him over to Marinette's home to play Megastrike 3 and stay for dinner, and he had forgotten about it by the time he got back), but it was there enough for him to notice.

"Did the cleaners come through?" he asked Nathalie as she passed by him, heading for his father's office. She paused and looked back at him.

"What?"

"What's with the smell?" Adrien asked again. His gaze dropped to the steaming mug of tea that Nathalie was carrying. Now that he thought about it, he had seen Nathalie with tea more and more often. She never drank tea herself- she much preferred coffee, as did the Gorilla- which meant that the tea had to be for-

"Nathalie? Is my father okay?"

"Yes, yes, of course, why do you ask?"

"You're bringing him tea," Adrien pointed out. This close, he could smell a peppermint smell coming from the cup. "And then- is that what the scented stuff was about? The rose stuff and now the lemon?"

"No, no, not at all!" Nathalie claimed immediately, though her reassuring look seemed a little stretched around the edges. "I was just, ah, trying to make this place a little homier, you know? And he's just trying to find some more inspiration for the next line, and you know how he gets with that. So I was making tea. So he could focus better. And, uh- I need to get this to him before it goes cold, so-"

And Nathalie was gone.

"I didn't think my father normally drank tea," Adrien commented as he headed up to his room. As soon as he stepped inside and closed the door, he let Plagg out. "Maybe it's a new thing, instead of snacking on chips like he normally does."

Plagg let out a noncommittal hum.

"At least tea tends to be healthy, I think," Adrien added, dropping his bag next to his desk and plopping into the chair before digging out his Literature homework. "Unless it has a ton of sugar in it, and Father _hates_ sugary stuff. He says that it's bad for your health." He let out a huff. "But it's so _tasty_ , though. I don't know how anyone could resist anything from Marinette's family's bakery, and there's a lot of stuff in there that's got sugar in it."

Plagg, who had found an abandoned wedge of Camembert, ignored him.

"It's nice that Nathalie is helping him focus, though," Adrien said cheerfully, flipping over to the right page. "And keeping him from binging on salty stuff. Mom always said that it was bad for his blood pressure for him to be doing that all the time when he got frustrated."

Plagg just rolled his eyes.

* * *

Gabriel Agreste was _not_ having a good week. His latest doctor's appointment (he was going to _far_ too many of them nowadays, and it was _still_ a complete waste of his time) had found that his blood pressure had dipped only slightly, even with the medicine and all of Nathalie's efforts to use natural remedies. He had finally had to tell her to knock it off with the suggestions after another well-intentioned yoga session had strained a muscle in his back (requiring icing and a massage session, taking even _more_ time away from his designing and evil villain-ing). He had made her abandon the aromatherapy as well, after he had retreated to his villain lair one afternoon only to find it smelling like lemons and sage.

(Never mind the potential health benefits, the sweet smells just threw off the _atmosphere_ of his lair and he couldn't have that.)

Another spike of stress hit him midweek. One of his potential Ladybug candidates had submitted a video of one of the more recent akuma attacks to the Ladyblog where not only was her voice clearly audible, but she was spotted in the corner of the frame moments after Ladybug swung past the window she was by. There was no possible way that she could have detransformed in that time frame. On top of that, he had gotten a glimpse of her earrings in that brief shot in the video, and they were _ridiculous_ chandelier earrings.

That was the final nail in the coffin for _that_ particular theory. No Miraculous user would take off their Miraculous in the middle of a battle. He sent an akuma after the girl just out of spite, but Chat Noir whisked her out of harm's way before the villain could even threaten her more than a little bit.

It was annoying, really. And with the loss of a perfectly good lead, he spent nearly a day sulking in his lair and chucking wadded-up pieces of paper with abandoned designs and aimless scribbles at the wall. Nathalie was clearly concerned about his sudden downturn in mood, and she spent even more time shoving tea onto his desk. It was annoying, but not that concerning.

Until he found a bowl of sparkly bath bombs on the edge of his bathtub.

"Nathalie, what on _earth_ is this doing in my bathroom?" Mr. Agreste demanded, slamming the bowl down on her desk. One of the bath bombs fell out and rolled across the floor. Nathalie took one glance and visibly slumped in her seat.

"I ran out of ideas, sir."

"...so you thought that _glitter bath bombs_ would help?"

Nathalie twitched, her fingers inching towards her tablet as though she wanted to throw it up in front of her as a shield. "...one site suggested taking relaxing baths. That was the best way I could come up with to suggest it."

Gabriel picked up a bath bomb and inspected it scathingly. "I hate glitter."

"Understood, sir."

"It just makes a giant mess and is impossible to get out of hair."

"Right, sir."

"No more foisting home remedies on me without prior approval first."

"Of course, sir."

* * *

Nathalie was at her wit's end. Mr. Agreste had been putting increasingly more pressure on himself (and on her) as the doctors got increasingly nosy. All of her attempts at reducing his stress and blood pressure levels at home were ending up either absolutely useless or even causing Mr. Agreste even _more_ stress (she hadn't _meant_ to spill the essential oils, or apply them quite so strongly), and his ever-growing string of failures with akumas was making his designing suffer. It was only a matter of time before the public started noticing- or, worse, _Adrien_ noticed.

So she decided that a vacation was in order.

"The owner said the beach house would be available for up to two weeks," Nathalie told Mr. Agreste, holding out her tablet so that he could look at it. "It's by the coast, very nice weather at this time of the year, and secluded, so you wouldn't be bothered by traffic and people bothering you."

Mr. Agreste scowled at her. "Leave? _Now?_ For two weeks? It'll just stress me out _more_ to not even be _trying_ to make any progress with the akumas! If I make them every day, it'll wear out Ladybug and Chat Noir and I'll win!"

Nathalie only sighed. "Sir, with all due respect, you've been trying that for the last several months and Ladybug and Chat Noir have only gotten _better_. They're in top form and their teamwork is polished. You don't do your best thinking under stress, we know that perfectly well, and I think the repeated losses are just clouding your judgement."

Mr. Agreste glared. Nathalie scrambled to correct herself.

"I mean- you start to scramble for ideas, and then you don't do your most logical thinking," Nathalie explained. "You don't come up with your best ideas under stress. I think it would be good for you to take a break and recalibrate for a bit. You can think up some ideas for powers for akumas while you're away, even. And no offense, sir, but you've been so focused on Ladybug and Chat Noir that your design work is suffering." She sighed. "Please just take, like, twenty steps back and get the spring and summer lines all properly sketched out and cleaned up. I think it'll really help you get back on track, and it should help your blood pressure lower enough to get the doctors off of your back."

Mr. Agreste scowled, then sighed, then scowled some more. Finally he let out a disgruntled grumble.

" _Fine_. Fine, okay, it's not like I haven't done design retreats in the past. The location sounds decent enough, and I like that it has a cleaner and a chef that comes with it." Mr. Agreste snatched the tablet to look at the page Nathalie had up more closely. "And I suppose a break from akumas wouldn't hurt. You're right, I need a break so I can come up with a list of potential powers for my akuma so they can be super-powerful and finally defeat Ladybug and Chat Noir! Besides, if there aren't any attacks for weeks, they'll be unsuspecting and off of their game when I return and whack them off of their feet."

"Of course, sir," Nathalie agreed automatically. She personally didn't think that the superheroes would let themselves slip _too_ much in the absence of akumas, considering how they already did "patrols" a couple times a week that ended up being more like training sessions. In fact, they would probably be even more on top of their game because they would actually be able to get their schoolwork done and _sleep_ , but she wasn't going to tell him that. That would just be counterproductive. "How soon do you want to be off?"

"Late tomorrow, I think," Mr. Agreste decided, handing the tablet back. "I just need to pack and inform Adrien of my absence, and rearrange a couple meetings- actually, could you do that? Either that or send a _reliable_ intern to take notes for me- and then I can go. I assume I would take a plane?"

"I'll line a flight up, sir, and a driver to pick you up at the airport."

* * *

As soon as she got back to the house, Nathalie all but collapsed into her chair. Thankfully Mr. Agreste hadn't put up any last-minute objections to leaving prior to getting on the plane, but that didn't mean that things had gone as smoothly as anticipated. Mr. Agreste had managed to agree to a low level of correspondence while he was away on his doctor-prescribed vacation (she was _not_ going to type up meeting notes to send to him just so he could further stress himself out when she had _everything under control_ , thank you very much, she already had plenty to do), but he had refused to leave Nooroo behind. Mr. Agreste's plan was apparently to grill Nooroo for more information that he could use against Ladybug and Chat Noir, because apparently he wasn't already doing that on an almost daily basis in Paris.

Nathalie had been rather hoping that Nooroo would get left behind, considering that arguing with an obstinate hostage of a kwami wasn't exactly terribly relaxing, but Gabriel wouldn't budge on the topic. He seemed to think that a small vacation might make the kwami loosen up a bit. Nathalie only hoped that that didn't mean that Gabriel was going to try to give the kwami alcohol, because she got the feeling that that would only end badly.

There was also the small fact that if Nooroo was left behind, the pin would _also_ be left behind and there was no way that Gabriel was leaving his Miraculous unsupervised. Nathalie would have been offended that he didn't trust her to keep it safe (because he would no doubt leave it in his lair, which only she knew how to get into ), but in all honesty he had a point. If he had left Nooroo and the pin behind, she would be _sorely_ tempted to just turn the stupid thing (plus the peacock pin that he thought she didn't know about, plus the book) over to Ladybug and Chat Noir because _really_ , this whole thing- whatever it was that Mr. Agreste was trying to accomplish- was _far_ more trouble than it was worth.

Sighing, Nathalie pushed herself out of her chair and headed out to the rest of the house. Even now that Gabriel was safely strapped into a plane and headed for balmy weather, she had things to do. She had fallen behind on her scheduling for photoshoots while dealing with Gabriel's blood pressure fiasco, and she _definitely_ had to air out the house just a bit more to get rid of the last lingering traces from the aromatherapy.

After all, she _had_ always hated lemons.

* * *

 _A/N: I don't know what it is about writer's blocks that inspires me to inflict pain and discomfort on Hawkmoth/Gabriel, but this is the result of one of those blocks.  
_

 _As with most of my stories, this is a one-shot and is therefore complete. Please review, it really makes my day!  
_


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